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Helmut Stellrecht Hitler Youth

“Property”

Organisationsbuch_13


From Faith and Action (1938) by Helmut Stellrecht for the Hitler Youth:


In the National Socialist state, there is no longer property with which the individual can do whatever he wishes. There is no unlimited right of property, only a right that has been earned to administer it for the good of the whole.

§ Property is a loan. One may certainly use it, but only to advance the interests of the whole.

§ A farmer has a field. It belongs to him. And it should belong to him, for his ancestor tilled it, his fathers toiled on it. It belongs to him as long as he tills it so that food for other citizens grows on it. But the field must be taken from him if he leaves it fallow because he is too lazy or unambitious to till it.

§ A house! Why shouldn’t a German have a house, a home for his children? The apartment in the city has taken a piece of the fatherland from the German. His own house and garden give him again a piece of Germany, and he has a right to that.

§ But it is not an unearned gift. Property must be earned by the work of the hand or the mind. The ambitious and hard-working settler in newly-won land will plow more land for himself and his children than others. Is that a failing on his part? He grows grain not only for himself, but also for others. What he grows is his property.

§ But he who through treachery and deceit gains possession of that which the mind and hands of others have created is a thief and a deceiver. He is like the swindler and the Jew who, without creating anything themselves, live greedily from that which they steal from others using corrupted justice. To eliminate them in Germany is our highest law. Once Germany’s forests were freed of wolves. In the same way, Germany must be freed of those who are worse and craftier than wolves.